Startups shouldn't raise money

This sounds like it is written by someone who has never started up a company or run a small business or a even lemonade stand in their life . This is equivalent to saying banks shouldn’t lend money to small businesses , businesses need money to survive, the guy having the money and one ready to work it are almost always not the same . it could be VC, the bank or your mom giving you the financing to start that lemonade stand.

Even if the assumption that founders put zero money of their own is true (as others have pointed out it is not, in vast majority of the cases) founders have enormous opportunity, emotional cost, lost salary and the financial hardship.

Do not dismiss any product CRUD app or not so lightly .

Building and selling any product ,getting an user base is very difficult. Attracting people to work in your product is even more challenging as it is not cool. Getting all of them working as an organization is no less difficult just because tech does not involve fancy R&D

While I truly understand the point the author makes, I cannot accept that all founders are the wanna get rich type who think that raising money equals a successful company. I think he's biased by the history of the easy money era of the post 2008 recession to pre Coronavirus. I think now things are going to be different and raising money will not be as easy as it was in the 2010s.

That’s true. If this is the case, is it enough to do a good job in growing the business, in order to maintain control of it, or you can do something else to ensure that investors won’t pull the carpet from under your feet?

> The alternative is to forgo raising money and creating a sustainable business from the beginning, growing linearly with the number of people that give you money for your product.

Assuming that it doesn't require money to build, which is dubious in many cases, but alright.

> Not only that, but because you don’t have the safety net of a pool of money, you are forced to find the fastest path to sustainable growth.

Sustainable growth? Or just the fastest path to growth at any non-monetary cost so you can make the next payroll? Sure it might be cash sustainable growth but could be unsustainable in other ways such as making ever higher promises to keep customers buying more, allowing all sorts of unscrupulous purchases of user data, or shipping software without any modicum of security.

> You now have no choice but to be ruthlessly focused on the things that impact your bottom line (i.e. pay the bills)

Or you end up cutting corners and compromising on the product just to get some cash in the door. A lot of ethical red lines become maybes when the bank account declines. I have a lot of friends in the startup space and they have amazing stories of suddenly cash short companies burning up their reputation just to get the next sale.

Crises don't lead to clearer decision making. A constant threat doesn't lead to clearer decision making. It leads to shorter-term thinking. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0146167299025001006

Would you do a better job for your company if they kept you one paycheck away from eviction? Or would you play politics, become a sycophant, hide errors you made, and be heavily focused on just making it to the next week no matter the cost?